January 2023…how can that be? Another year already. I love the holidays and as anxious as I am to put up holiday decorations, I am equally anxious to take them down…December 31st…earlier if possible. A friend once called it “extreme decorating” because it comes down so fast…we’re all over it here.
The New Year brings with it thoughts of resolutions…eat better, exercise more, put the devices down, connect with people…so many things run through my mind at lightening speed. Along with all the ideas comes the desire to really do something this year…something that really matters to me.
A few years back I was reading the Dallas Cowboys Star magazine, and this writer, Josh Ellis, said something that really struck me. He said, “We set New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, or save money, or read more books, but those are goals – not the means to achieve those goals. What we really should think about when we set those resolutions is the road to reach them. In truth, these are mindsets. We should instead resolve to be more self-disciplined, or to make smarter decisions, or to invest more time in ourselves” (STAR magazine, December 31, 2016).
I don’t really like news years resolutions. In part because I’m not great at keeping them and also because they make me feel like I’m starting this bright new year, that’s full of possibilities, unhappy with myself and thinking I need to change to be okay…like I’m starting from a deficit. That feels like seeing myself from a place of lack and I don’t want to do that. So rather than resolve to change something, I’m going to resolve to expand something…me. Me, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically…becoming capable of more. I’m going to undertake a mindset change…a new perspective. I’m going to open to something new and different…a mindset change about me and what I believe I’m capable of.
I’ve noticed something about myself over the years and that is I have a tendency to hold back. Not in relationships. I’m pretty good at those, but in other areas of my life. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m afraid of failing or if it’s because I’m afraid of succeeding. I get an opportunity at work to take things to another level and I start, kind of, and stop…stay where I am. I get an opportunity to speak and I do and then when it might grow to something more I stop…too afraid. I pursue a spiritual path of study and start out strong but then stop and never really get going again…because I’m afraid. What exactly I’m afraid of I’m not sure…but there’s something there that really stops me from going all in.
I have had a daily mantra the past two years of “I am willing” and that willingness is for whatever comes along. Willing to learn, grow, care, feel, sit, stay with difficult emotions, commit, write, express myself, love, offer compassion, be kind…you get the idea. My intention for this year is “All In.” I’m all in in my life all year…taking opportunities where I find them and saying yes to them even when I’m scared…although I’m not talking about taking stupid chances or jumping in when my gut tells me it’s a bad idea. I’m talking about the things I know I should do but I avoid because of fear…taking opportunities that I have turned away from in the past.
I guess it fits with the mantra…I am willing to be all in…whatever that means. That’s some scary shit there. It’s scary because I am not sure what it means and I like to know details before I commit to something. I don’t like surprises…well, winning the lottery yes, being out of my comfort zone, not so much. And I’ve noticed my comfort zone has gotten smaller and smaller these past few years. I think the isolation of Covid, for an introvert like me, just made me a hermit. I now think I could live without ever leaving the house…and I could…sadly. You can get everything delivered…literally everything you can think of…there’s even tele-health…a doctors appointment delivered to my home…perfect. So the Covid years have not been great for my psyche and now I need to reclaim myself. Maybe it’s not reclaim, maybe it’s just claim. Claim myself and all my potential…all in, all the time.
I’m having a difficult time writing this blog. I’m guessing because it’s very personal and I feel especially vulnerable talking about my fears and the things that keep me from engaging. I rarely talk about when I was an attorney because it ended badly and in some ways, many ways, I am still not over it.
I worked as a Guardian Ad Litem (GAL) representing children who were abused and neglected. All of the GAL’s in Colorado had contracts with OCR, the Office of the Child’s Representative. Contracts were renewed each year…not really renewed, you had to reapply each year to get another contract. There was a woman in their office that disliked me intensely, although I don’t know why. We rarely saw each other and didn’t know each other at all. She took it upon herself to make sure my contract didn’t get renewed. She had an issue with my visitation schedule and the fact that I had postponed a visit because everyone in the house had the flu. She told me I should have gone to the foster home anyway, even though the foster mother was sick too. Anyway, the details don’t really matter because she got what she wanted, they didn’t renew my contract. She called me into her office and said, “You have a great reputation. No one has anything bad to say about you. And we’re not renewing your contract.” That’s a direct quote. Even after 12 years I can still hear her saying those words to me. I was dumbfounded and destroyed. I was humiliated and I felt so much shame even though I didn’t do anything wrong…except in her eyes I guess, and ultimately that’s all that mattered.
I couldn’t talk about it for days because all I could do was cry. The following year, the same woman, decided she had a problem with my billing, in particular, the way I split the time between two companion cases. I had split the time in half because I thought it came out pretty equally. It went from that one question to her accusing me of over billing and I was let go immediately. I had to get all my cases together and give them to an attorney she decided should have them. I had to meet with and say goodbye to all my clients very quickly, which is difficult when you’ve established trusting relationships with children who were a abused and neglected. It was one of the worse times of my life.
I thought it was over after that, but she had just gotten started. She grieved me to the board of attorney regulators…or whatever their official title is. They met with me but really didn’t care what I had to say. They had clearly made up their minds and I was suspended for 6 months. I guess I’m still technically suspended because I never had a hearing to request reinstatement. I have zero interest in ever being an attorney again.
I am intentionally and respectfully (although she may not deserve that) not using this person’s name because that feels spiteful or vindictive and I don’t want to be either. She questioned the time it took me to get to appointments and why so many were .5 or .6 (of an hour) meaning 30-36 minutes. We had to keep track of and bill our time in six minute increments…that’s a pain in the ass. I told her that a lot of the places I went for meetings and to see kids were around 30-45 minutes from me. I don’t see why that was so suspicious and such a big deal. Although my case numbers didn’t increase over that year, because I couldn’t pick up any new cases, my billable time did. I told her the message I got from her the previous year was that I wasn’t doing enough so I did more. I did more home visits with kids, more visits with parents and relatives, attended more staffings…anything I could do to do a better job. I did make mistakes in my billing. I didn’t change one type of billing when I should have and there were some inadvertent mistakes…it’s not that hard to make a mistake when you’re billing six minutes at a time on 30 cases. I offered to write a check immediately to cover any mistakes that I made but wasn’t allowed to.
OCR wrote a long brief to the attorney regulators outlining their grievances with me. I started reading it but it was so full of lies I stopped. When I met with the attorney regulators it was clear they didn’t believe me. I understood for the first time why people confess to things they didn’t do…I just wanted it to end. I gave up talking. I gave up trying. I thought “fuck it,” they’re going to do what they want so go ahead. I just shut down and did my best to stop caring. When they wrote their decision they just copied what OCR said. On the phone they told me I billed for talking to relatives in court who weren’t there. That never happened. They read transcripts of hearings but you don’t know who is in the courtroom unless they are part of the hearing and enter their name on the record. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t defend myself at all. I didn’t say anything except “okay” when they told me their decision.
And then, as if that wasn’t enough, I’m positive this woman called the IRS and had me audited. What are the odds that my wife and I would both be audited randomly a few months after all of this? I’d say zero. I had never been audited in my life. My taxes aren’t that interesting. I talked with my accountant beforehand, but went to the audit alone, because I couldn’t afford to bring him…I was unemployed after all. The audit was ridiculous. I had receipts for everything but the auditor wouldn’t take them. I kept receipts from meals I took kids out to for their birthdays or just to talk. I had receipts from gifts I bought them for Christmas, birthdays, or graduations. The receipts had case names and numbers on them. These are legal tax deductions according to my accountant, but she wouldn’t take them. She said, “How do I know these weren’t gifts for your grandkids?” And, in not my finest moment, I snottily said, “How do you know they were?” The conversation was asinine. I never claimed any expense from my grandchildren on my taxes. Again though, I just gave up. I actually told her “I don’t care what you do,” again, not my finest moment. I just wanted it all to stop. Because of her the IRS said I owed them many thousands of dollars. I ended up declaring bankruptcy and completing an offer in compromise with the IRS to settle the debt…a debt I didn’t owe.
I am not the only person that this woman went after. She did the same thing to another female attorney and made sure she lost her contract. I don’t know if she grieved her as well. I have heard that this woman is no longer employed by OCR but I don’t know why…and at this point, I don’t care. And there were still more fall outs….I lost my best friend, also an attorney contracting with OCR. I have no idea why. She wouldn’t talk to me. I tried calling, emailing, texting, and sending a letter but never got any response. That crushed me and after all these years, almost 11, I still find it hurtful. I don’t know if that woman said something to her or if being my friend was too risky…I have no idea. I had many friends who worked for OCR, and was offered opportunities to do contract work for them doing home visits and attending staffings, but OCR made a rule that you could not hire anyone who had been grieved. This woman made sure I was cut off at all levels. I have no fucking idea what her issue was with me…but there sure was something…maybe we had some awful connection in a previous life. I don’t fucking know.
She destroyed me professionally, financially, in my closet friendship, and emotionally. I actually kept all my other friendships although I distanced myself from everyone. It didn’t matter what I could explain or anything, I felt so much shame at the accusation and in everything that followed, that except for a small number of people, I lost touch with everyone. I walked away ashamed and have continued to carry that shame and pain for eleven years. I haven’t talked about this with anyone but my wife and kids…and my best friend, when I still had one.
The crazy thing is I was planning to get out of the business of being a Guardian Ad Litem. I had worked with abused and neglected kids as a Child Protection Senior Caseworker for 11 ½ years and then as a GAL for 8 and I was tired of it. Tired of all the damaged children and families. Tired of not being able to help the way I wanted to. Tired of being part of a system that isn’t properly funded or able to offer the resources that people really need to change and get better…there was very little “better.” Now people who know me know I wanted to do something else. I had gotten certified to become a mediator, looked into practicing elder law, but ended up thinking it might be the same thing, just older clients. People who don’t know me have, on occasion, accused me of lying about changing jobs. I guess if you don’t know me, I shouldn’t really care, but I did.
I thought that I wanted to work with adults in this next phase of my career, but I had spent over twenty years working with children. I started a program teaching mindfulness to very young children. I wanted to work with kids before they were broken and invest positively in them and who they could become. I wanted to teach them positive ways to interact with themselves, others and the world…to be mindful and aware of their interactions. To respond to people and situations, not just react.
Now what does all that shit have to do with being all in? Must be something import because it sure came pouring out. I actually know…I don’t think I’ve been “all in” since all that shit happened. I think I gave up and put a wall around me that I am only now considering dismantling. The wall kept in a lot of pain and shame I didn’t know how to deal with and it kept out anything too scary or potentially too hurtful…because I couldn’t take any more…I couldn’t take the risk…any risk.
Now Let’s Be Real…what does this all mean for 2023? For being all in? I am realizing that this whole experience kept me from being all in on me…believing in myself…seeing the same potential in me that others see. I let one person’s hatred, or vengeance or whatever the hell it was, color everything I saw about myself and everything I believed about myself. That stops now. She didn’t know me. Whatever her problem was, it seemed to have very little to do with me and much more to do with her. She had no reason to even dislike me let alone, to set out to, destroy me. And she did destroy me…my job, my finances, relationships, my confidence, self-esteem…but all these years later that only continues with my permission. And I’m saying no! Not this year…not any other year…not anymore. I’ve let her have too much time and too much power already. I’m going to listen to what I know about myself and what people in my life, who really know me, believe about me. I’ll take their opinions under advisement but never hers…never again.
Let’s have some real wisdom from contemporary teachers, who know way more than me, to help facilitate this change…
Marianne Williamson says that, “It’s never a circumstance that needs to change – it’s we who need to change.”
Eckhart Tolle says, “You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge.”
And Pema Chodron, who I respect deeply, has said, “The wonderful irony about this spiritual journey is that we find it only leads us to become just as we are. The exalted state of enlightenment is nothing more than fully knowing ourselves and our world, just as we are. In other words, the ultimate fruition of this path is simply to be fully human.”
So I am all in to be fully who I am, without holding myself back. To know myself and all my potential and to seek ways to fulfill that potential. To be the full, big ME, not the tiny, small, hidden me.
The change I’m really looking for is inside my own head. Buddha said that with our thoughts we create the world. I need to create a world where I am not someone else’s villain. I’ve allowed that for too long. So here’s to 2023, and each of us focusing on finding and knowing our own truth, our own goodness, and our own humanity. Here’s to being true to ourselves because let’s be real, ultimately we’re all we have.
And remember, how we love people is all that matters. May we all find peace.
Kai Raines 